The Comebackologist
by Amelia Island
Summary: The erstwhile Mr. Wormwood returns. Musicalverse. (Eventual Honey/Wormwood)
1. The Knock in the Night

**CONTENT WARNING: This fic contains allusions to childhood trauma and abuse: sometimes subtle, sometimes not-so; sometimes past, sometimes present. The name-calling is sometimes inspired; usually not.**

* * *

The Knock in the Night

* * *

When the knock came, it came repeatedly, like rapid fire: sharp little reports, tumbling one after another after another, far too earnest to be the inquisitive tap of a tree branch poking around an upstairs window pane.

When it came, Jennifer Honey froze solid. Had the knock resounded from a louder, more thunderous fist, she might have even hid beneath the table out of habit… but it had been a year already since her dreadful aunt was driven from this house, and no one in the village had caught so much as a whiff of Agatha Trunchbull's boot polish since.

She relaxed a little. But not much. Jenny, while not suspicious of visitors as a rule, was perplexed by the knock all the same. The problem was it was very late. She cast a quick glance up the stairs from her solitary seat at the kitchen table, but saw that Matilda had not been roused from bed. Not yet. It was only a matter of time if this knocking was allowed to persist. And all right—_maybe _Jenny's glance up had been a _little_ hopeful that she would see her spindly charge outlined at the top of those stairs, scrubbing her eyes, and articulating the question of the midnight hour: _who is it at the door, Miss Honey?_

But Jenny, despite her interior feelings on the subject, was reminded that _she_ was the adult here. So she set her teacup aside in its saucer, pushed out her chair, and rose. Squaring her shoulders did nothing to lend her rail-thin figure any extra padding, but she did so anyway as she made her way into the foyer and unlatched the front door.

"Yes? How may I—"

The words broke apart in her throat as a raised fist fell through the air toward her. She took a startled step back, years of experience dodging blows carrying her out of the line of fire... but the fist did not pursue her over the line of the door. It, too, froze, and she realized that it had only been continuing on its frantic trajectory with the door when she pulled the latter open.

"Ah. Ehm. Is this the, uh... the Miss Honey residence?"

The proper greeting seemed hard-won, but through mighty struggle was produced. Jenny blinked, before peering closer into the blue gloom of the porch. The gangling figure planted on the welcome mat removed his hat; his other hand white-knuckled the handle of a large suitcase.

"It is. And... to whom am I speaking?" she asked.

She already knew to whom she was speaking. She knew, but her full understanding had yet to catch up with her knowing.

"Name's Harry. Harry Wormwood." Matilda's father finally stepped into the humble light cast by Jenny's porch and fully materialized before her. His over-slicked head was bowed—possible to get a better look at her, she was shorter than most everyone who wasn't her students—and what she found to be a surprising pair of eyes swam into focus. When one wore such loud suits, one's eyes generally tended to number further down the list of identifiable features; but hidden within the man's short-sighted squint, she saw two deep and troubled pools of light. "We met before," Harry said finally. "During that nasty bit of business with the—"

"Russians." Jenny cut him off before he could utilize a more colorful derogative. "Yes, I remember."

Mr. Wormwood shifted his weight awkwardly. His suitcase appear overfull; Jenny could only hope it didn't contain a king's ransom similar to the one he had been lugging the last time they crossed paths. "I must confess I'm... I'm. Well. I'm frankly astonished to see you," she said.

"Astonished. Yeah. See me." Mr. Wormwood cast a furtive look about, as if he thought the shadows not entirely English and more a Kremlin shade. "Are you goin' to invite me in, then?"

"Of... of course!" Mortified that she hadn't extended the invitation already, Jenny stepped to the side to allow him passage. Mr. Wormwood led with his knees, giving the threshold quite a generous berth as he high-stepped over it. "Would you... like some tea?" she offered as she shut the door.

"Don't suppose you got nothin' stiffer, do you?" he asked her. Jenny, easily parsing the man's overreliance on negatives, simply shook her head. "Ah, well." Harry Wormwood set his suitcase down in the foyer as if he'd just arrived home after a long sabbatical abroad. This worried Jenny, but she entreated him to follow her into the kitchen with an extended hand. She moved to the stove to prepare him a cup of tea anyway as he sat down.

"One lump or two?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Hasn't the world given me enough lumps already, woman?" Wormwood seemed to poll the room rhetorically as Jenny turned to deliver her guest his tea. She was shocked to find his feet up on the table, though he quickly removed them. She wondered if it was her expression that had chastened him. This certainly wasn't the man she remembered meeting in the village library: he seemed at war with his more brutish behaviors. That is to say, he seemed dreadfully uncomfortable. He didn't thank her as Jenny finished setting a place for him and sat down; but then, she had never learned to anticipate nor expect gratitude for her efforts.

"Mr. Wormwood, why are you here?" Better to be forthright about it now that pleasantries had been seen to.

"I'll just come right out and say it, Miss Heiney." Wormwood leaned in as Jenny flushed. "I need you to put me up. In fact, I... I insist you do!" He made a fist on the table, hovered it, but didn't go so far as to bang it home. The display was rather pathetically ineffectual. "A father's got his rights o' visitation, haven't I? Where is the boy, anyway? Given him up already, have you? I could've saved you the trouble when I—"

"Matilda went to bed hours ago, Mr. Wormwood," Jenny again interrupted her interrogator gently. "She's sleeping now. But you may see her in the morning. I imagine she'll be... interested to see you." That Matilda's interest in her negligent father might border more on the scientific at this point, Jenny kept to herself. Harry Wormwood could certainly look like one of the reptilian specimens her class was enamored with when he put his mind to it—and seeing as how Matilda bore not even the slightest resemblance to her father (apart from the eyes, perhaps), they might as well have been a different species.

"Mr. Wormwood, of course you are welcome to stay here tonight," she continued. The man's appeal was loudly suppressed all over every inch of his miserable face, and seemed trying to escape again through his madly jogging knee beneath the table. "I can make up a bed for you in one of the spare rooms. I will set an extra place for you at breakfast in the morning, shall I?"

"Well, that's... I suppose I could stay the night," Mr. Wormwood agreed with false benevolence. He stood up; he hadn't even used the proffered tea to warm his hands, but Jenny didn't regret her gesture. "You've got more than enough room, haven't you? Christ, what do they pay your lot these days?"

Jenny simply bowed her head. She made up the bed, as promised, and found Mr. Wormwood pacing in the foyer when she came back out of the downstairs guest bedroom, suitcase once more clutched in his fist as if it were a life preserver. She wondered distantly, curiously, if the desperate man had helped himself to any of the family silver while she was out of the room, but the suspicion was gone again in a moment. She had little attachment to things in this house: more of an awestruck appreciation for them. It could all be gone again tomorrow and her wistfulness would be only fleeting. So long as she had Matilda.

"Your room is ready for you, Mr. Wormwood," Jenny said, feeling very much like a housekeeper. "I'll be right upstairs, all night, should you need anything." She laced her hands and waited.

"That's all right, then." Mr. Wormwood looked too uncomfortable to pass her, as if he could only accept her charity so long as she wasn't a party present to it. When Jenny stood unmoved, he resettled his hat on top of his head and shambled past her.

"Mr. Wormwood?" Jenny called after him.

The man froze in the doorway. He looked like a cornered animal, as if he half-expected her to revoke her invitation and turn him back out into the night.

"I rather miss the green hair." If there was mischief in her remark, she utterly blamed Matilda's influence on her.

She observed the reluctant light switch on in his eyes. It was as if every part of him wanted to resist recognizing irony, or anything above the level of a salesman's carnival bark—but he was not as inoculated against wit as he would have the world believe. All of this Jenny saw in the expression that passed across his face, like the shadow cast by a cloud scurrying across a countryside.

"Good night, Mr. Wormwood," she said.

"Good night," Matilda's father returned stiltedly "And I'll expect breakfast before noon, shall I?" he called after her with nasty cunning, the demand inherent, as if he expected and in fact _intended_ his request to be an imposition.

Jenny suppressed an amused smile, and continued up the stairs without a backward glance at her unlikely guest. But her expression soon grew troubled. They were all looking to morning now, and mornings in this household started far earlier than what Harry Wormwood was evidently used to—but morning would bring with it its own set of questions, chief among them being:

_What on earth will Matilda think about all this?_


	2. Breakfast Before Noon

A/N: To my lone reviewer so far on this story, thank you! You inspire me! This chapter is for you!

* * *

Breakfast Before Noon

* * *

"Good lord, what have you done to the boy?" Mr. Wormwood roared.

The early golden light shed through the open kitchen window hadn't the least pacifying effect on the man, who seemed determined to shake the songbirds from their trees with his voluminous outrage.

"I'm a girl." It was a refrain young Matilda Wormwood thought she had given up repeating for good, and she wasn't sure how she felt revisiting it now. She wasn't sure how she felt discovering her _father_ sitting like a king at the end of the kitchen table when she came downstairs for breakfast the next morning—but she could be a benevolent child, and was willing to see these things through. She went dutifully to Miss Honey to accept a piece of toast with marmalade.

"You're a right freak, 's what you are!" Mr. Wormwood exclaimed, dark eyes tracking her as she navigated the kitchen. "Look at you!" He gestured floridly. "You're all... stretched!"

"Children grow up, Mr. Wormwood," Miss Honey submitted helpfully. "Matilda's grown several inches since you last saw her. We had to buy her a new uniform this year." The young woman smiled, pinched her glasses, and adjusted them on her nose. "Why, I'm certain she'll be taller than me very shortly."

"Everyone's taller than you, ya shrimp," Mr. Wormwood said, addressing a grown woman. He felt put upon; ambushed. Aggrieved. He had not slept at all the night previous, turning over and over in the cushy bed, unable to find a moment's peace with the pieces of his old life gamboling relentlessly around in his mind. He was still used to sleeping on the hard hotel bed alongside his wife, with Rudolpho wedged between. When they had kicked him out, he had gone on to sleep with Michael on the foldaway; then, eventually, the floor.

Here it was so...

Quiet.

_Too_ blooming quiet.

"And for one so low to the ground, I don't appreciate being talked down to by the likes of you!" he informed one or the other, or both. He knew he was the subject of scrutiny this morning, and he didn't like it. Not one bit. It was enough to make a man feel as if his hair had gone green all over again, but at least one idiot in their present company had admitted to finding it fetching. His eyes darted again to Miss Honey. This was who his daughter had abandoned her own flesh and blood for? This Honey was almost worse than the sunbeam she stood in. All... tranquil-like. He wasn't used to it by any means. He didn't like it. Not one bit.

"No one's talking down to you, Dad," Matilda was so good as to inform him. "It's only courtesy you think about doing the same for us."

Wormwood spluttered. When his daughter surprised him by presenting him with the plate of piled toast, glistening with marmalade, he took it and helped himself. But he didn't enjoy it. Not one lick.

"And I'm supposed to thank you, am I? For giving me your crumbs?" he guessed. It was hard to maintain the effect of his temper with said crumbs decorating his mustache.

"No. Thank Miss Honey," Matilda said as she turned away. "After all, she's the one who let you in."

It bothered Harry Wormwood: that thing she left unsaid. If it had been the girl at the door, would she have left him on the doorstep? He, her own father?

Miss Honey's face pinched with concern as Matilda exited for the garden. When he was done, the woman removed Mr. Wormwood's empty plate and ferried it off. With a sink that deep she could afford to let the dishes pile up; but she didn't. She scrubbed it clean and rinsed it before his very eyes. Mr. Wormwood stared at her like he was seeing sorcery.

"Bet you regret letting me in now. Bet you'll turn me out first thing now that the boy—"

"Girl," Miss Honey corrected mildly.

Mr Wormwood sneered. "Now that the _girl_ has had her say."

"But Matilda said nothing, Mr. Wormwood. In fact, I rather think she's still trying to wrap her head around you being here." Miss Honey glanced thoughtfully out the window. "You know, in all the time I've known Matilda, I don't believe I've ever seen her wrestle with a problem she couldn't solve. But the way she looks at you..." Miss Honey turned back around to face him, loosely crossing her thin arms. Still thoughtful-like.

Mr. Wormwood was uncomfortable. "What's she doin' out there anyway?" he demanded suspiciously. It was one thing to have the boy lurking around the same room as him, but to have Matilda out of sight felt equally intolerable. He had expected some sort of judgement or reckoning; now, his unfulfilled expectation hung in the air like undischarged lightning. "Out there in the garden?"

"Reading," Miss Honey replied.

"Readin'." Wormwood snorted, before remembering that his daughter had always taken the distinguished 'worm' out of 'Wormwood' and put it right back into _bookworm_. "What's she readin' for? Thought there was no school today."

"In this house we read for pleasure, Mr. Wormwood." The hesitant line of Miss Honey's mouth was a poor attempt at a smile. She needed to be in school, that one, if she wanted to be any sort of salesman for her own ideas... but Wormwood wasn't buying this latest line. He got up and joined Miss Honey at the sink; the woman seemed ready to shrink sideways from him. And who could blame her? He was a mighty presence, after all. A giant among men.

But he was a bit glad, anyway, when she seemed to think better of her first instinct, and remained at the window beside him. Mr. Wormwood faced out, glaring at the little figure sitting in the garden, as if doing so would lend him some better understanding. It didn't. "Always readin', that one. Even now." He blathered on. "Don't suppose she's shown an interest in sports or anything? What with those extra inches? Bequeathed to her by her father's excellent genes, I should mention?"

"I'm afraid our physical education program has had to be... overhauled," Miss Honey replied. "I can now convince a quarter of the student body to enter the gymnasium of their own free will."

Mr. Wormwood turned to her abruptly. "I suppose you want a medal?"

"I'm afraid medals and trophies provoke their own post-traumatic episodes," Miss Honey carried on earnestly. Lord, it's as if the woman couldn't see the bored expression he wore right in front of her face. Did she need her eyes checked? "We've had to start from the ground up since my au—since the former headmistress left her post. Although you'll be happy to know your daughter—Mr. Wormwood, what are you doing?"

Her hands rose and hovered fearfully by the stems of her glasses, only his had gotten their first. Harry Wormwood lifted them off her nose and scrubbed the lenses hard with the corner of his pajama shirt. "You're not picking out the signs, Miss Handy," he explained. "Any fool can see it on my face."

"See what exactly? On your face?"

"Good lord, woman!" He polished her glasses with an extra gusto then that was enough to make her wince. "You need lessons in readin' a _person_, is what you need. These kids could use some proper preparation for the world! For instance, when a man makes a face like mine—"

Mr. Wormwood allowed his expression to go so exaggeratingly slack that his mouth popped open, and he rolled his eyes heavenward. "When a man makes _this_ face, it means he's bored out of his gourd, get it? It means move on with it! There, that's some free advice for you. Take it or leave it."

"I am very sorry to have bored you, Mr. Wormwood," Miss Honey apologized as Harry Wormwood took the startling step of replacing her glasses back on her face himself, their lenses now more smudged than ever.

"It's quite all right. Apology, accepted." He released his hands, fanning them out at the sides of her head like an artist presenting the finishing touches on his masterwork. "See? Didn't even go to school, and you learned something."

Miss Honey, blinded by the smudged lenses, couldn't tell it when Mr. Wormwood switched from disapproving of her, to regarding her. If she did sense their moment overdrawn, she certainly couldn't divine the reason. Neither could Harry Wormwood, as it turned out. He had just concluded telling the woman she was less than diverting, and now he couldn't seem to look anywhere else in the room.

"Dad? You're not bullying Miss Honey, are you?" A small voice cut through the moment, and Mr. Wormwood leapt back like a cat. Miss Honey pushed hard at her glasses, although they had no further to go on her face.

"Sneaky nit! Why aren't you in school?" he roared.

"It isn't a school day. You said it yourself a moment ago." Matilda turned to Miss Honey. "Miss Honey, may I walk into the village to return my book?"

"Finished already?" Miss Honey smiled ruefully. "Of course, Matilda. I'll go with you, shall I? I'm in need of some new reading material myself."

"Are you sure my father should be left alone? Unchaperoned?" Matilda seemed doubtful.

"Um, hello? I'm standin' right over here?" Mr. Wormwood wasn't used to being locked out of conversations, and thought the oversight accidental. He was used to being their sole delivery service, in fact of point. "Or has all that readin' ruined those beady little eyes of yours?"

"Dad won't want to come with us on account of the Russians," Matilda excused him from the proceedings.

A chill swept through Harry Wormwood at the mention of _Russians_, and the argument he had been thoughtlessly mounting against whatever the girl might say died immediately on his lips.

"Oh. I see." Miss Honey's eyebrows drew together in concern. "Well, Mr. Wormwood, you had better stay here then. Is there anything I can get you from the village?"

"Yeah. How about a proper meal?" he suggested. "One that comes wrapped in tinny foil?"

Matilda and Miss Honey exchanged a look. He didn't like it when they did that. Understanding shouldn't be so... it was spooky. "I'm afraid we don't have a microwave, Mr. Wormwood," Miss Honey explained. "I didn't see any use for one."

"Right. One of those too, then." He clapped the teacher on her back, practically as narrow as his palm was wide. She even stumbled a little. Built like a shaft of milkweed, that one. _"You_ make enough. Judgin' by this place you could have one in every room if you wanted."

"I think your father will be just fine here on his own, Matilda," Miss Honey said. "We'll only be gone an hour or so."

As Mr. Wormwood retired and the girls went together to the foyer to collect their things, a sudden bellow from the living room shook the beautiful house on its foundations.

"No _telly?"_ he roared.


	3. The Headmistress's Office

.

* * *

The Headmistress's Office

* * *

"And you're certain you're all right with this new arrangement?" Miss Honey asked Matilda when she could once more be assured of their privacy.

It was the next school day, and they were together in her office brewing tea in the coffee percolator. The former headmistress's lair had been cleared of trophies (these Jenny presumed her aunt had taken with her; she didn't know when or by what transportive means), and the surveillance network had been decommissioned alongside the Chokeys and other torture devices that had once enforced the Trunchbull's draconian rule. Now, the walls of the office were papered with drawings by Miss Honey's students, an ever-growing menagerie that had once patchworked the walls of her former dwelling.

The slender teacher arranged tea by the window (another surprise discovery, as she had been previously unaware of any windows in the office). It wasn't every lunch period that Matilda visited her, and Jenny wouldn't have it any other way. It was important for her charge to engage with peers outside of a classroom, after all... though she couldn't help feeling a bit flattered every time Matilda's slight knock alerted her she would be having company.

"Is that what my father intends, Miss Honey, do you think?" Matilda sat perched on a pile of books occupying the spare chair, nibbling a cucumber sandwich. "To stay with us?"

"I'm not sure what your father intends, Matilda." Miss Honey set a saucer of tea down before the girl and leaned against the desk, cradling her own cup. "But I did extend the invitation before we left today. It seemed only polite." The woman did not appear as if she was contriving a teaching moment; in fact, she appeared rather uncertain about it all.

"It was very kind of you," Matilda assured her. "But I'm afraid, Miss Honey."

"Afraid?" That was certainly not what Jenny had expected to hear, although she understood the sentiment all too well. "What are you afraid of, Matilda?"

"I'm afraid that my father will not give you the same courtesy." Matilda set her sandwich down and looked at her very gravely. "I'm afraid he doesn't really understand courtesy, unless his life is threatened."

Jenny smiled like weak tea, and took a sip to regain her strength. "Well, it will be an adjustment for us all," she agreed. "I'm sure he will tell us why he has returned when he is ready." She did not want to raise Matilda's hopes by voicing it aloud, but Jenny allowed herself to be hopeful, at least, that Mr. Wormwood had undergone a change of heart where it came to his daughter. Of course, with that hope came a fresh anxiety she didn't feel at all equipped to face just yet: if the Wormwoods decided they did want Matilda to rejoin their family, what then?

_It must always be Matilda's choice,_ she thought firmly. That was the only right way to go about to. Though of course, if the Wormwoods elected to involve child services—but Jenny pushed the thought from her mind. She had to focus on making life the best it could possibly be for Matilda in the time they were granted. She wasn't sure how this might square with allowing the girl's father back into her life—into both their lives—and Matilda herself was being a bit of a closed book in that regard. How she wished she could know what the girl was thinking!

"But I already know _why_ he's here, Miss Honey," Matilda supplied. Jenny blinked her surprise in something resembling Morse code. "He has nowhere else to go."

"What do you mean, Matilda?" She was genuinely puzzled, but had learned long ago to take the little girl at her word. "What about the rest of your family? Your mother, and your brother, and that interesting dance instructor?"

"But haven't you noticed?" Matilda asked her. "My father isn't wearing his wedding ring." She hopped down from her stack of books, leaving Jenny bewildered as the woman processed this not-insignificant detail that had gone overlooked. "I don't think he _is_ married to my mother, Miss Honey. Not anymore."


End file.
